Introduction
A curated selection featuring the prolific and inspiring work of U.S. activist George Lakey. Dive in to explore his projects, writings and hard-won lessons on nonviolent action and social movements.
About George Lakey
George Lakey has spent more than sixty years on the frontlines of movements for peace, justice and nonviolent change. His first arrest came during a civil rights sit-in in the 1960s and his most recent was for taking action on the climate crisis in 2021.
Over the decades, he’s co-led a ship carrying medical aid to Vietnam in defiance of the U.S. war, organized within LGBTQ and anti-patriarchy movements, built cross-race, cross-class coalitions against Reagan-era policies, and even served as an unarmed bodyguard for human rights defenders in Sri Lanka. He’s walked hundreds of miles for environmental justice and trained thousands of people to take peaceful, powerful action.
George was an educator at Swarthmore College in the United States where he was the Professor for Issues in Social Change. During his time there he launched the Global Nonviolent Action Database documenting over 1000 real-world examples of nonviolent campaigns from almost 200 countries. He also co-founded and directed Training for Change, leading more than 1500 workshops across the world to help organisers, activists and community leaders strengthen their skills and confidence. He also co-founded the Movement for New Society, Choose Democracy. and the Earth Quaker Action Team.
George is also a writer and storyteller. He’s the author of many books, including How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning and Facilitating Group Learning.
In his late 80s George continues to teach, write and encourage new generations of changemakers, always reminding people that building a better world takes both strategy and heart.
Key Projects
George Lakey has co-founded and/or started many resources vital to social movements.
Global Nonviolent Action Database
The Global Nonviolent Action Database was developed by George Lakey in collaboration with Swarthmore College students and the Peace and Conflict Studies Department, along with the Peace Collection and the Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility. This free, publicly accessible database was launched in 2011 features over 1400 researched cases of nonviolent struggle from nearly 200 countries each with a searchable narrative under my direction in 2011 — contains over 1,400 cases of nonviolent struggle from over a hundred countries, with more cases continually being added by student researchers.
Choose Democracy
ChooseDemocracy.us is a US project and website that offers a unity-building pledge, strategy development and training. It was founded by George Lakey alongside Daniel Hunter and others.
Training for Change
George Lakey co-founded Training for Change (TfC). with Philadelphia activist Barbara Smith.
“Training for Change is a training and capacity building organization for activists and organizers. We believe strong training and group facilitation is vital to movement building for social justice and radical change.
Since 1992, we’ve supported groups taking direct action, building strong teams and organizations, and working at the grassroots. We train thousands of people each year in North America, and also internationally, across issues and sectors – from campaign strategy retreats for anti-gentrification community groups, facilitation training for union leaders, to de-escalation skills for immigrant rights groups resisting deportation.” – Source
Earth Quaker Action Team
“Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT) is a grassroots, nonviolent action group including Quakers and people of diverse beliefs, who join with millions of people around the world fighting for a just and sustainable economy. EQAT (pronounced ‘equate’) was founded in 2009 by Quakers (including George Lakey) from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.
EQAT’s actions nonviolently confront the people who benefit from the current energy system, boldly challenging them to turn away from fossil fuels. EQAT uses nonviolent direct action because it works. Direct action has been crucial to the success of every major social movement over the last century. Direct action allows us to boldly challenge power and highlight injustice. As Dr. Martin Luther King elaborates in Letter From a Birmingham Jail, “nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.” – Source
Listen to Ingrid Lakey’s reflections on EQAT’s campaigning on the Craft of Campaigns podcast.
Movement for a New Society
The Movement for a New Society (MNS 1971-1988), was a global training and action network of groups, whose mission was to “spread the tools and consciousness of nonviolent social change.” MNS members, who continue to function as an activist support network, developed a three-pronged approach to social change:
- Analysis
A critical and comprehensive assessment of the society and problems - Vision
A detailed aspirational conception of a just, democratic, decentralized, and caring social order - Strategy
Identifying goals, objectives, methods and effective tactics to win nonviolent revolutionary change
MNS was founded in 1971 in Philadelphia by leaders of A Quaker Action Group, former staff of the American Friends Service Committee, and secular activist pioneers and veterans of the Civil Rights, peace, anti-war, anti-nuclear, and environmental movements. Prominent among these founders, who were prolific organizers, strategists and authors, were: George Lakey, Bill Moyer, Richard and Phyllis Taylor, Lynne Shivers, Larry Scott, Lillian and George Willoughby, and others.
- Learning from the Movement for a New Society: An Interview with George Lakey, AK Press Blog.
- Oppose and Propose: Lessons from Movement for a New Society by Andrew Cornell. Includes interviews with George Lakey and other participants.
- A History of New Society Publishers by David Albert. NSP formed out of MNS and published many influential books.
Books
How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning
George Lakey, How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning (2018) Melville Books
“A lifetime of activist experience from a civil rights legend informs this playbook for building and conducting nonviolent direct action campaigns.
In an era of massive worldwide protests for racial and economic justice, it is important to remember that marching is only one way to take to the streets. Protest must be supplemented with the sustained direct action campaigns that are crucial to winning major reforms.
Beginning as a trainer in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, George Lakey has spent decades helping direct action tactics flourish and succeed on the front lines of social change. Now, in this timely and down-to-earth guide, he passes the torch to a new generation of activists. Lakey looks to successful campaigns across the world to help us see what has worked, what hasn’t, and why: from choosing the right target to designing a creative campaign; from avoiding burnout within your group to building a movement of movements to achieve real progressive victories.
Drawing on the experiences of a diverse set of ambitious change-makers, How We Win shows us the way to justice, peace, and a sustainable economy. This is what democracy looks like.” – Source: Publisher
Summary of themes/lessons in How We Win:
- Practices for unity and inclusion.
- Support for innovation.
- Words into action/walking the talk.
- Sustainability and positivity.
- Leadership development in context of team, collective effort.
- Credibility provided by nonviolent discipline.
- A learning curve with vision-led goal setting.
Access the book and related materials:
- Lakey, G (2018) How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning, Melville House.
- Read Full Book (Internet Archive)
- Publisher’s Website
- Video – Legendary activist George Lakey talks strategy and his book “How We Win” (29:50 mins)
- Webinar – How We Win: Reflections on Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning (1.01 mins)
- Podcast – New Books Network, 2018 (46 mins)
Strategy for a Living Revolution
George Lakey, Strategy for a Living Revolution, (1973) W.H.Freeman & Co Ltd
In the book Strategy for a Living Revolution (1973) George Lakey defined a five stage framework for nonviolent regime change:
- 1 Cultural preparation;
- 2 Organization-building;
- 3 Confrontation;
- 4 Mass noncooperation;
- 5 Parallel institutions which can carry out the legitimate functions formerly carried out by the Old Order (economic, maintaining infrastructure, decision-making, etc.)
The five stages are presented in sequence which shows how each preceding stage builds capacity for the next stage – but in reality the stages overlap and are cyclical.
- Strategy for a Living Revolution, 1973 – Available on the Internet Archive
- Read an essay adapted from Lakey’s 1973 book called Strategizing for a Living Revolution.
Also available in PDF and in Farsi. - Article – How ‘Strategy for a Living Revolution’ came to life
We need a strategy that validates alternatives, supports the experience of freedom, and expands the skills of cooperation. We need a political strategy that is at the same time a community strategy, one that says “yes” to creative innovation in the here and now and links today’s creativity to the new society that lies beyond a power shift. – George Lakey, Strategizing for a Living Revolution.
A Manual for Direct Action
George Lakey & Martin Oppenheimer, A Manual for Direct Action: Strategy and Tactics for Civil Rights and All Other Nonviolent Protest Movements (1965) Quadrangle Books
- A manual for a new era of direct action
An organizing manual that powered the civil rights movement gets a 2017 update, Waging Nonviolence, 2017
Facilitating Group Learning
George Lakey, Facilitating Group Learning: Strategies for Success with Diverse Learners, Second Edition (2020) PM Press
“From the acclaimed coauthor of A Manual for Direct Action comes Facilitating Group Learning, an essential resource designed to help educators, trainers, workshop leaders, and anyone who assists groups to learn. George Lakey presents the core principles and proven techniques of direct education, an approach he developed for effectively teaching adults in groups. To illustrate how it works in action, Lakey includes a wealth of compelling stories from his vast experience facilitating groups in a variety of situations.
Direct education cuts through the pretense and needless complications that can distance learners from subject matter. It removes false expectations (for example, that kinesthetic learners will strongly benefit from slide presentations) and false assumptions (for example, that a group is simply the sum of the individuals). This approach focuses the encounter between teacher and group; it replaces scattered attention—of a teacher preoccupied with curriculum and participants preoccupied with distractions—with gathered attention.
Unlike in other books on group facilitation, the author emphasizes critical issues related to diversity, as well as authenticity and emotions. Step by step, this groundbreaking book describes how to design effective learning experiences and shows what it takes to facilitate them. Ultimately, it brings all the elements of the author’s direct education approach together.
Facilitating Group Learning also contains material on sustaining the educator, addresses working with social movements, and includes the Training for Change toolkit of group learning techniques.” – Publisher
- Facilitating Group Learning: Strategies for Success with Diverse Learners, Second Edition, PM Press, 2020
- Read Extract
Other Books
- Viking Economics: How the Scandinavians Got It Right-and How We Can, Too
- Read related article: What the US can Learn from Scandinavia in the Struggle Against Inequality
- Grassroots and Nonprofit Leadership: A Guide for Organizations in Changing Times, co-authored with Berit Lakey and others (1995, reissued 2016)
- Moving toward a New Society (co-author), Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers, 1975
- No Turning Back: Lesbian and Gay Liberation in the ‘80s (co-author with Erika Thorne), 1983
- Opening Space for Democracy: Curriculum and Manual for Training for Third Party Nonviolent Intervention; co-author with Daniel Hunter), 2004
Learn about George’s Life
Learn more about George Lakey the person by reading his memoir and watching his documentary.
George Lakey’s Memoir
George Lakey, Dancing with History: A Life for Peace and Justice (2022) Seven Stories Press
“A memoir of a Quaker activist and master storyteller on his involvement in struggles for peace, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, labor justice, and the environment, whose life will be the subject of a new documentary film coming in 2022.
From his first arrest in the Civil Rights era to his most recent during a climate justice march at the age of 83, George Lakey has committed his life to a mission of building a better world through movements for justice. Lakey draws readers into the center of history-making events, telling often serious stories with playfulness and intimacy. In this memoir, he describes the personal, political, and theoretical—coming out as bisexual to his Quaker community while known as a church leader and family man, protesting against the war in Vietnam by delivering medical supplies through the naval blockade in the South China Sea, and applying his academic study of nonviolent resistance to creative tactics in direct action campaigns.
From strategies he learned as a young man facing violence in the streets to risking his life as an unarmed bodyguard for Sri Lankan human rights lawyers, Lakey recounts his experience living out the tension between commitment to family and mission. Drawing strength from his community to fight cancer, survive painful parenting struggles, and create networks to help prevent activist burnout, this book shows readers how to find hope in even the darkest times through strategic, joyful activism.” – Publisher’s description
George Lakey Documentary
Citizen George, Bulldog Films, 2024
This documentary presents the life and work of Philadelphia-based Quaker activist George Lakey, a non-violent revolutionary who has worked his entire life for justice and peace, guided by his ideal of societal transformation.
Citizen George moves back and forth in time, highlighting specific events of George’s activist life – including fighting for civil rights, anti-Vietnam War activism, LGBTQ rights, human rights in Sri Lanka and climate justice. In addition to detailing his life as an activist, it tells George’s personal journey as a husband, father and out gay man. Animated sequences, inspired by graphic novels, illustrate scenes from George’s life. Since the age of 19, George has been conscious of his life’s purpose – to use whatever gifts he has to work for justice and peace. Today, at 86 years of age, George’s message of a nonviolent revolution is more urgent than ever.
Watch Trailer
- See the film / Host a screening
- Discussion Guide
- A new film about George Lakey’s life encourages bravery, Eileen Flanagan, Waging Nonviolence
“Citizen George” is a well-timed documentary that offers important lessons for navigating today’s era of political conflict with hope and courage.
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